Maintainable

Avdi Grimm - Don't Be Too Clingy To Your Tests

Episode Summary

Robby has a candid conversation with Avdi Grimm, the creator and head gardener of Graceful.Dev, about why well-maintained software is more about teams than code, why we need to pay more attention to documentation, the value of useful commit messages and conveying the why over the how, examples of executable documentation, and more of Avdi’s programming wisdom.

Episode Notes

Robby has a candid conversation with Avdi Grimm, a software developer, consultant, coach, speaker, and author of the books, “Confident Ruby” and “Exceptional Ruby” He is also the creator and head gardener of Graceful.Dev. Avdi’s opinion on well-maintained software is that it’s more about teams than code and the fact that more attention need to be paid on documentation. He emphasizes the value of useful commit messages and conveying the why over the how. He also shares examples of executable documentation. 

Robby and Avdi dive into what technical debt looks like for different teams and how it can either be taken as a serious course of action or just as a term for areas of friction in a codebase. Avdi shares his experience in organizing technical debt-type tasks and highlights the importance of teams being able to articulate and quantify friction. As organizations continue to adopt the DevOps mindset, there is lingering debate as to whether it is more of a philosophy or a role. 

Avdi believes that DevOps is less a role and a philosophy, an approach to lifecycle management and how teams are organized around that outlook. Stay tuned to sample more of what Avdi had to share in this resourceful 44-minute episode.

Book Recommendations:

Resources Mentioned:

Helpful Links

Subscribe to Maintainable on:

Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.

Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community